Thinking about getting a soundcard

[AlienALX]

haha talk about irony !

Just sorted one of those. Wanted one for ages. Not fussed about gaming with it, will be purely for music. My silver rig does not have a decent sound solution at all (it's an AM2+ motherboard) so it will be ideal for that, running into the Aune which has a crap sound chip (I will run it line).

 

[Dawelio]

No, that won't fix voltage noise

Crap :lol:

 

[Excalabur50]

My zxr arrived today and what a difference it has made, i thought it might improve things a little over my onboard audio but i was wrong its improved things quite substantially more than i expected
The drivers installed without issue and i can say im really glad so far

 

[AlienALX]

My zxr arrived today and what a difference it has made, i thought it might improve things a little over my onboard audio but i was wrong its improved things quite substantially more than i expected
The drivers installed without issue and i can say im really glad so far

Don't forget to switch it to 192khz

 

[SuB]

Don't forget to switch it to 192khz

You realise that just adds processing time right?

Most windows audio (talking games) is 48, cd's / audio is almost all 44 and at a push 96 (but not in many places). Setting the card to 192 just makes it resample everything it doesn't change the quality of the actual sound *at all*

 

[AlienALX]

You realise that just adds processing time right?

Most windows audio (talking games) is 48, cd's / audio is almost all 44 and at a push 96 (but not in many places). Setting the card to 192 just makes it resample everything it doesn't change the quality of the actual sound *at all*

Weird it did for me. Maybe it was going from the stock settings to high enough to cover my audio CD rips? I noticed a marked change in the sound when I did that.

If I said I thought it improved the sound quality then I simply got my context wrong. What I meant was the above, that if you have audio with a higher bitrate than you have set on the sound card it will sound better when you allow a higher bitrate.

Obviously crap sound cards (and crap DAC amps like my Aune) can not do this. The Aune won't even do 96 without cutting out.

 

[SuB]

Weird it did for me. Maybe it was going from the stock settings to high enough to cover my audio CD rips? I noticed a mark change in the sound when I did that.

If I said I thought it improved the sound quality then I simply got my context wrong. What I meant was the above, that if you have audio with a higher bitrate than you have set on the sound card it will sound better when you allow a higher bitrate.

Obviously crap sound cards (and crap DAC amps like my Aune) can not do this. The Aune won't even do 96 without cutting out.

Oh yes, absolutely. If the original source material is legitimately mastered in the higher bitrate, then it will be better.

CD Rips shouldn't be affected as they are mastered in 44 (unless of course it was mastered in a higher bitrate), so even if you rip it in 192, you don't get any extra detail, it just increases the file size, there's no more resolution to it than there was before (if it was mastered in 44).

DVD's are mastered in 48 so similar thing, no point going higher.

Not dead sure on Blurays but since they have the space I imagine they can go higher, I haven't done much Bluray stuff

 

[AlienALX]

That must be it then. I still buy CDs as only MP3 are offered and I prefer ripping them as they are with no compression. Oddly the CD is usually cheaper too !